End of the Byzantine Empire

The end of the Byzantine Empire took place in 1453. By the middle of the 15th century the Ottoman Turks had all but completely encircled the Byzantine Empire, occupying not juts Anatolia but the Balkans and northern Greece. From 1451 Sultan Mehmed II started closing in on Constantinople: he laid siege to the city on April 2, 1453.

Background
The Byzantine Empire had been under pressure for centuries, increasingly confined to the area immediately around its capital, Constantinople (present-day Istanbul).

Mixed Fortunes
Originally the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, Byzantium went on to develop its own identity. After the fall of Rome in the 5th century, it became a superpower in itself, although it was predominantly eastward-looking in its imperial ambitions. By the end of the first millennium, the empire was on the retreat; the Seljuk Turks had overrun most of its Middle Eastern territories. In 1204 Constantinople was sacked by crusaders. Since then, the empire's fortunes had partially recovered.

End of the Byzantine Empire
The Ottomans were named for Osman, a 14th-century Turkic warlord whose divinely ordained imperial destiny was said to have been revealed to him in a dream. Mvoing into Anatolia with his kinsfolk and clansmen, he offered their services as soldiers to the Byzantine empire and then built his own power basse in what remained of the Seljuk state. He achieved this against the reluctance of the Byzantines; indeed, the mercenary bullied his masters into acquiescense.

Into Europe
Under Osman's son, Orkhan, the Ottomans extended their dominions across the Bosphorus and into Thrace. Successive sultans conquered Bulgaria and Macedonia. A coalition of Christian princes came together to face Murad I at the Amselfeld in Kosovo in 1389. A Serbian suicide-squad succeeded in assassinating Murad as the battle commenced, but Bayezid I took charge and won the day. His victory secured him Serbia and Bosnia.

Bayezid had been lucky - or so it seemed. The Christian knights had broken through the main mass of Ottoman infantry, foundering only at the last. It took a succession of these "narrow" defeats for them to realize that the Ottomans deliberately placed their softer, more expendable corps of conscripts in the front. European knights would have to fight their way through repeatedly and, exhausted, find themselves facing the enemy's elite soldiers: the janissaries. Fanatically loyal to each other, the janissaries were slave soldiers. Many of them, ironically, had originated from the empire's Christian territories. Recruited as boys, they grew up in the sultan's service. Highly disciplined and superbly trained, the majority of them knew no other life. The Ottomans also deployed a growing range of artillery: cannon, first seen at Kosovo, were used increasingly from then on. Above all, the Ottomans were quicker and more ready to innovate than the Christians, who were still attached to the chivalric tradition. The news from Kosovo awoke the West to the danger represented by the Turks. Pope Boniface IX proclaimed a fresh crusade. Over 90,000 heeded the call: contingents came from Switzerland, France, Germany, Hungary, Wallachia, and Poland; the Kniughts Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights also participated. Yet all of these groups had their own leaders, and their divisions proved fatal to the cause. The Ottomans won a resounding victory at Nicopolis in 1396.

A major setback
Just as he prepared to close in on Constantinople, however, Bayezid met his own nemesis. In 1402 Timur Lenk appeared in Anatolia with his Mongol army. Taken by surprise, Bayezid marched his army across the country in the searing heat of summer. They reached Ankara, where Timur was waiting, in a state of near-exhaustion, only to find that the warlord had poisoned the wells and diverted the waters of the Culuk Creek so that the Ottomans and their horses had no access to drinking water. Even so, they put up fierce resistance once battle was joined the next day, on July 20, but they ultimately suffered a shattering defeat. Bayezid was taken prisoner by Timur and died a year later, still captive.

It took the Turks decades to rebuild their forces. Christian Europe fought back - Hungary's Janos Hunyadi scored some spirited victories in the 1440s - but the European nations were still dogged by disunity, leaving them weak.

Under siege
Meanwhile, under Mehmed II, the siege of Constantinople began in April 1453. Mehmed II built his own fortress, Rumeli Hisar, which controlled access to the Black Sea. In a single night, more than 70 warships were shifted overland on rollers into Constantinople's inner harbor so that a sustained assault could be mounted from the water. Huge cannon were deployed around the city; the biggest could fire a 1,100 lb (500 kg) ball. While these big guns pounded the city walls above ground-level, Mehmed instructed miners to tunnel beneath. Despite tremendous resolve, on May 29, the city fell.

Aftermath
The fall of Constantinople brought the Byzantine empire to an end after 1,000 years, but - renamed Istanbul - the city was to continue to play a historic role.

A New Age for the City
The Ottoman Empire went from strength to strength. Eventually, along with southeastern Europe, it occupied much of the old Arab Empire. Constantinople was transformed, and the great church of Hagia Sophia became a stunning mosque as the sultans assumed the authority of the old caliphs as leaders of the Islamic world.

A Long Decline
From the end of the 17th century, the Ottoman empire stagnated and then passed almost imperceptibly into a long decline. Even so, inertia carried this "Sick Man of Europe" on until the final collapse came after World War I.